Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Okay, so like, you all know what I think about Creationists. Im not an appeaser. Im mad at the current generation of PhDs for not crushing them years ago. I continually get reprimanded from the PTers for calling Creationists 'stupid'-- but every time I hear Behe/Wells/whoever speak Im shocked the men can figure out how to feed themselves, much less get a goddamn PhD.

I think theyre evil little morons.

I didnt think it was physically possible for my opinion of them to go any lower.

You know the next line: I was wrong.

You know those other parts of the animation in EXPELLED? The parts that arent obvious traces of 'Inner Life'? I figured they just got those parts from 'Unlocking the Mysteries of Life' or some dumbass Creationist crap.

But I kept getting emails from people "I know Ive seen that other stuff before!" "Students who plagairize dont just use one source-- I bet EXPELLED people used something other than 'Inner Life' too." But I ignored those people. I was like "HAHAHAHAHA! DI Fellows are stupid mother fuckers, but they arent that stupid! No, Im sure they made those parts on their own!"

But youre probably thinking "Wow. EXPELLED-TARDs really did some hunting to find that Australian animation. I guess thats kinda like work. I mean, the closest thing youll ever get to 'work' out of a lazy ass silver spoon Creationist."

Nono, dear reader. You know where those fuckers got the idea to steal that particular animation?PBS.

After denying, then admitting, then denying (OH! Mega-TARD took that last post down! No harbles for him, eh?) stealing the hard work of a small animation company and a couple of hard working scientists, turns out the Discovery Institute Fellows stole from PBS too. The organization they found just sooooooooo offensive after 'Judgment Day' and 'Evolution'. The organization that teaches little kids how to count and the alphabet and how to read and how being different is okay...

I dunno if I should admit this, being married and all, but I am totally starting to love you (or at least your "got'em-by-the-balls" blog).

I wonder how, when I was being more active as a 'lab-rat' destroying stuff on the bench and all, you and I would have got on sharing our toys (centrifuges, cyclers etc etc). It would have been either really good or really bad. (I can just tell!)

Sometime I must ask you your thoughts on the point of origin and flow through population groups of the 32-bp deletion in CCR5. (The last unpublished part from my thesis...)

Im mad at the current generation of PhDs for not crushing them years ago.

As one of the "current generation", I'd suggest that you channel your anger elsewhere. These people have been around since before Galileo. Should I be mad at my mentors, or their mentors? No. I don't think that willful ignorance is my fault, or their fault.

We just need to make sure that we do all that we can to bottle them up; they will never go away, but we can lessen their impact.

ERV: Im mad at the current generation of PhDs for not crushing them years ago.

Albatrossity replies: As one of the "current generation", I'd suggest that you channel your anger elsewhere. These people have been around since before Galileo. Should I be mad at my mentors, or their mentors? No. I don't think that willful ignorance is my fault, or their fault.

Obviously more could have been done but we can claim a great deal of progress. A generation ago our side was fighting national efforts to put in flood "geology." Now we get some creationism without mention of the age of the universe and considerably watered down compared to what came before. We got a long ways to go: getting evolution actually taught correctly and with the emphasis it deserves is still an uphill battle. And we need to work on eliminating the crap the creationists are still trying to push on the kids.

We just need to make sure that we do all that we can to bottle them up; they will never go away, but we can lessen their impact.

We can win and win outright. But it is not something that will happen quickly. This is a fight that will take decades. I hate to tell ERV that she might very well be still fighting these nuts when she retires. Indeed if things go extremely well her retirement could be the time to declare victory. If strong and sustained effort is not made then no one reading these words will live to see victory and very likely neither will their kids.

A criticism for ERV, the creationists are not, in general, morons though obviously they have more than their fair share. There other explanations: scientific incompetence, scientific ignorance, dogmatism, and just being unwilling to admit to themselves that "I was wrong."

You really think creationism could have been "crushed" years ago? You really think it's in the process of being "crushed" now? You don't get it. In 40 years they will still be working hard to undermine everything you and I know to be true and beautiful about Life. Before Dembski there was Denton, before him Gish, before him Morris, before him William Jennings Freakin Bryan. They are motivated by religion and it's not going to change. We must, of course, keep up the whack-a-mole in real time, but don't kid yourself that there was something more that could have been done in the past. We been whackin!!

[added in preview: the preceding was written before I read candide's comment. I'm curious as to what an "outright win" will look like...no creationist pressure to dilute science education whatsoever? If you really think that's remotely possible, even in decades, I can only suggest that you've never lived in Oklahoma,]

I'm vaguely concerned that when Expelled gets sued for copyright infringement, they'll say "See? The conspiracy is real! They're trying to suppress the movie because they can't handle the truth!"Actually, I know they'll say that; my real concern is that the public, and the news media, will buy in to it.

Anonymous wrote: I'm vaguely concerned that when Expelled gets sued for copyright infringement, they'll say "See? The conspiracy is real! They're trying to suppress the movie because they can't handle the truth!"

Best response to that: "No, we're trying to suppress the movie because YOU'RE handling the truth. Specifically, you're stealing it, beating it to a pulp, and then trying to convince people it's something else."

anonymous: "I'm vaguely concerned that when Expelled gets sued for copyright infringement, they'll say 'See? The conspiracy is real! They're trying to suppress the movie because they can't handle the truth!'"

I wouldn't be too worried. Most folks understand that copyright infringement--stealing--is wrong.

It's funny how they actually don't deny that they plagiarized anything in their latest "defense" on UD:

"Concerning the intriguing smear campaign being carried on by long term activists on one side of the evolution controversy, we are completely confident of the validity of our copyright on our originally created animation."

So they are confident that they have copyrighted their originally created, plagiarized work. good non-defense.

In case you guys haven't been keeping up, the producers of "Expelled" are now seeking declaratory judgment against XVIVO that they have not done anything wrong in their animations. They are also seeking their attorneys' fees from XVIVO, lest anyone else repeat XVIVO's particular stunt again.

You know, that'd been bugging me. Although the "Expelled" transcription resembles segments in "Inner Life", it was clearly DNA in the former vs. mRNA translation in the latter. I thought it was maybe just sneaky modify-it-just-enough-to-get-away-with-theft a la WIIIIILIAM DEMBSKIIIIIII! I guess what he actually meant was "to avoid getting sued for stealing from Harvard/XVIVO, we copied some other stuff from less famous sources. We're fuckin' geniuses, you Darwinist losers."

These Expelled and Discovery Institute guys each need their own designated person to follow them around like that scene from Dexter's Laboratory, repeating "You're stupid! You're stupid! You're stuuuuuupid! And don't forget: you're stupid!"

shaden freud:It's not "intelligent design" if you copy from other sources!

CREASHUNISTS: UR DOIN' IT RONG!

Actually, they're being consistent. The intelligent designer, if such a thing exists, creates species in such a way as to make it look as though they evolved. Here, the IDiots have created animation in such a way as to make it look as though it was ripped off. Genius!

I earned my Ph.D. (Molecular Genetics) from a large well-thought-of New York University about five years ago. One day we were working in the lab when a senior graduate student loudly asked if maggots "naturally formed" in dead people or if they had to be laid by flies.

Everyone stood around with jaws hanging open. Eventually somebody pointed out that maggots are indeed the offspring of flies and that they do not spontaneously generate.

She thought for a moment and stated that, yes, she remembered reading that someone had done an experiment. (She acted like she saw it in last week's Nature)

My point is that unfortunately idiots get into grad school and some of them escape with Ph.D.s.

And yes, she was a young-earth creationist who believed all sorts of amazing nonsense.

The work from the PBS series was done by Drew Berry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia for the production company (I think it was Blue Sky). He worked out the molecular structure from various scientific sources and did the hard work visualising the dynamics. If Expelled have stolen his work, which was funded by Howard Hughes, he and they have a good case against the producers.

I was Drew's supervisor at the time it was done. You can find these videos at www.wehi.edu.au/wehi-tv

William can't even get his own bullshit right. The two above are credited with "Conception and Scientific Content" while XVIVO is credited with the animation.

The copyright is attributed to "The President and Fellows of Harvard University", but I'm not entirely certain that means XVIVO has no IP interest in the product. William provides no evidence or legal precedent to show otherwise.

"The copyright is attributed to "The President and Fellows of Harvard University", but I'm not entirely certain that means XVIVO has no IP interest in the product. William provides no evidence or legal precedent to show otherwise."

"Even so, I see nothing in your or my screen captures to indicate that David Bolinsky or Michael Astrachan or XVIVO have a copyright interest."

Seeing as though copyright notices are not even legally necessary, as per the Berne Convention, I don't see why you see it as significant proof of anything. The discrepancy itself shows that the copyright notices do not have to be comprehensive, at least. I know of no legal documentation that shows that XVIVO explicitly ceded the IP to Harvard as part of the collaboration agreement, which would show something.

It is entirely possible that the Expelled team intentionally took a chance and copied the XVIVO animation as closely as they thought they could get away with legally, in the hopes that it would provoke exactly the confrontation it has provoked, so that they could in turn launch into a whole new whine about suppression of "free speech" and the "Darwinist thought police" and all that crap. These people have a serious persecution complex they need to feed, and given their rank dishonesty and sleaze all throughout the promotion of this movie the past several months, I wouldn't put it past them. They desperately want to be martyrs under the oppressive yoke of the scientistic priesthood, and they'll latch onto anything to push that meme and flatter their own perverse craving for victimhood.

The main point one has to keep in mind when dealing with creationists and when anticpitaing their actions, is that creationism is just another conspiracy theory.There simply isn't anything more to it.Which means that they aren't just bad people, but very seriously deluded (and mostly stupid) people too.

It's beginning to look like some of them think that this is what scientists actually do all day. They muck about a bit, copy each other's work, and ad lib their own bullshit on top. More cargo cult science. "Waah, why isn't it working for us?" I don't know how they are missing the parts where we collect new data and do experiments.

- How do you know a law suit is correct?- ???- Creationists complain about it.

It is too bad if this will again play out in court instead of in the science arena, but that is how creationists sets up the game. OTOH I think those who predicted a hairier case than in Dover have been proven wrong. The chosen defamation strategy and the incidental thievery due to genuine ignorance of the flagship driver for the school boards "alternatives" are obvious within and without the court, at least in saner quarters.

And isn't it nice if the key case this time around would turn out not be about inserting religion in science class but another thievery case à la Hovind?

Considering how half-assed the final movie product reportedly is, my thinking is that Expelled was never really even meant to make it to theaters. They were hoping to bait someone into suing them, preventing the movie's release so they could scream "SEE? SEE?!? They even want to suppress this film! Because it has DA TROOF!"

The movie would therefore, become legendary among creationIDiots more as a symbol of 'Darwinian oppression'; far more powerful than the cruddy little movie would have been on its own.

Christian groups get to play the martyr all over again, downloading the "forbidden" movie via BitTorrent, doubtless getting to feel like they were early Christians in Roman times, staying one step ahead of the evul Darwinian lions...

It's beginning to look like some of them think that this is what scientists actually do all day. They muck about a bit, copy each other's work, and ad lib their own bullshit on top. More cargo cult science.

Yup, this is, unfortunately, what creationists typically think scientists do. I can't tell you how many times I've said (or seen someone else say) creationists don't do original research, only to have the creo fire back with "YUH HUH they do! Behe wrote two whole books!"

You can try to explain the difference to them, but I just don't think it gets through.

William Wallace's point seems to be that everything is hunky dory because Premise Media is ripping off Harvard University instead of XVIVO Productions. 1) I don't see how this lessens the crime on the part of Premise, and 2) Harvard University has a much bigger budget for legal assistance.

william wallace, while I take no position on the standing of anyone to sue anyone as IANAL, I'll point out that just because Expelled isn't being/can't be sued by someone doesn't change the fact that they plagiarized their content and that plagiarism is amongst the lowest and most despicable forms of intellectual dishonesty. Your attempts to distract from this point are typical of your ilk in these forums.

If XVIVO created the animation as a work-for-hire for Harvard, then Harvard owns the copyright and XVIVO doesn't, and thus XVIVO doesn't have standing to sue.

On the other hand, if XVIVO created the animation but retains the copyright, and licensed it to Harvard for use in the film "Inner Life of the Cell," for which Harvard owns the copyright, then XVIVO would still have standing to sue. The animation is only one component of the film's content.

About 20 comments down, tintenfisch mentions creationist stupidity in the research lab...

About a dozen years ago, twice within a fortnight or so, different grad students in our institution (one of the larger teaching hospitals in the southern hemisphere) said to me that "Jezus had 'perfect' DNA"... and it was only after the 'fall' that mutation began to occur. I wondered at the time if we could work out the correct basepairs needed to bring this "mutationless" human genome back into existence.

Has anyone checked on the clips of Nazis, and whatever other "lord privy seals" were used? I would bet they stole most of those from PBS documentaries too, but they're probably harder to identify for most people following this story.

Just another case of cretinist IDiots banging their Bibles so hard they break them.....it goes so well with the fact that they've decided there are really only Eight Commandments. Stealing? Bearing false witness? Prob noblem.

Oh, but they're still holy and righteous, because they don't worship fake Ceiling Cats, they wouldn't think of skipping church on Sunday (or Wednesday night prayer meeting either!), they don't sass back at their parents, and they're not coveting their neighbor's wife's ass or messing around with it...... Oh, and they're not messing around with their neighbor's ass [HORRORS!!!!11!] either........

So. The producers wanted to make a The Producers? Waidaminnit. Didn't that already been done, like 40 years ago? Man, that's so BC, like, Old Testosteront. And they even copied the Jewish lead, as well as the H-tl-r references. These guys must really be out to make a killing at the box office. Or at least a shilling. Or thirty.

Wonder how much they liberated from the tithe this time around? Wonder what they have been smoking rolled up in them Bible leafs to get so steined.

Play, movie, musical, cell animation -- what next... All about some hysters with a lying scheme about some hysters with a lying scheme, about some... No, I give up.

From what I've seen so far, the ownership of the Inner Life video, and thus the standing to sue for its infringement, is very much up in the air. While it's correct that no copyright notice is required, if the notice does appear, it must include the name of the owner. And, although it seems we have several versions floating around, the notices seem to list Harvard, not XVIVO, as the owner. So we'll have to wait to see how this gets sorted out.

Premise Media may have provoked XVIVO into a trap by threatening to sue on a copyright they may not own---Premise can look up the ownership in government records easily enough. Although I'm guessing at their legal theory, Premise then sues XVIVO for tortious interference with their business by issuing threats that it cannot enforce.

Premise may also sue for a "declaratory judgment," regardless of ownership. The basis here is to claim that XVIVO is hassling Premise with threats of an infringement suit, so Premise forces their hand by asking that the infringement issue be settled immediately. And in a court of Premise's choice, rather than XVIVO's choice. (DJ actions are fun if you are on the right side, but a real pain if not.)

Premise's strategy under either theory is probably to exhaust XVIVO's meager economic resources and force them into a settlement that allows use of the video and vindicates Premise's actions. Since the suit is only against XVIVO, the greater resources of Harvard are of no avail, unless Harvard wishes lend some help on a strictly eleemosynary basis. Also, Premise's suit is filed in a Texas court that has a reputation as a "rocket docket"---where suits come up for trial very quickly and are decided quickly. Say, before a big gun such as Harvard get get its ducks in a row.

We like to think of the IDers as stupid, but we're dealing here with the entertainment industry, which has all kinds of top-drawer legal talent, and loads of experience in both legal and business strategies for dealing with situations such as this one.

Well, hey, let's get back on the subject...the subject of XVIVO's standing in the supposed copyright violation.

That wasn't the subject. And while the copyright for The Inner Life of the Cell may be held by Harvard, XVIVO still retains a proprietary interest in the animation, which is but one small part of the copyrighted work.

Which part of "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL" did Premise Media not understand?

"I thought it was maybe just sneaky modify-it-just-enough-to-get-away-with-theft a la WIIIIILIAM DEMBSKIIIIIII!

I almost had a drink --> keyboard reaction to this. If it's a reference to "Leroy Jenkins," BRILLIANT.

-- CortxVortx"

I would never compare Dembski to Jenkins without proof that Dembski, at least, has some chicken. I'd also like a recording of various DI fellows shouting "Stick to the Wedge! Stick to the Wedge! Oh my God...."

I signed on to Expelled's blog under the name "Bible Tales" and started posting Bible quotes courtesy of http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/precepts.html with links to www.biblegateway.com, a real Christian Bible website.

My first two posts were accepted.

LE 24:16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death.DT 13:2-5 Anyone who causes someone to turn to another god must be put to death.

After that, they rejected all of these:LE 24:16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death.

DT 13:2-5 Anyone who causes someone to turn to another god must be put to death.DT 13:6-10 A man is required to slay his friends and members of his own family who are guilty of worshipping another god.

DT 17:12 A man who shows contempt for a judge or priest must be put to death.

DT 22:13-21 A bride in whom "the tokens of virginity" are not found is to be put to death

NU 3:10 An unauthorized person who acts as a priest must be put to death

Now of course there are many Christian posters on the blog who are posting all sorts of Bible quotes that support their point of view. One of the most fanatic is "John" who writes long angry childish rants full of Bible quotes. So I attempted to post this:

Bible Tales Says: .April 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pmJohn, I love your posts where you quote the Bible and God’s word but the webmaster is censuring my Bible quotes. Why are they afraid of God’s instructions about truth and justice?

I'm also mad at the lack of the PhD holders to squash this nonsense outright. I do have a PhD, but it's in computers, not biology or any of the other natural sciences, so I'm unfortunately I'm not well versed in biology well enough to squash them on my own. I wish a scientific movement would begin, starting with a major publicity campaign geared at exposing these morons. I mean, the hypocrisy alone is enough to convince the fence-sitters.

"plagiarism is amongst the lowest and most despicable forms of intellectual dishonesty"

Not that Permise media plagiarized, but I wonder what the extreme left wingers at ERV think about Dr. Martin Luther King's doctoral dissertation, "A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman"?

It was of course plagiarized, or, as liberalpedia puts it, it had "authorship issues".

I'm not sure whether, here, the ID people would argue in favor of a "common designer"(Harvard/XVIVO) to account for striking similarities between two distinct things or, in this case, video specimens. Perhaps, they would want to ease down on that line of argument at this point, given that it doesn't always work to their advantage.

Isn't there a saying that goes something like "Satan always tries to imitate God"?